33. The Pianist
The Pianist
It’s the middle of the night, pitch-dark, when a firm touch between my thighs rouses me from sleep.
My eyes shoot open before a hand comes to cover my mouth. Panic winds through me. I don’t know what’s happening, only that there’s someone pinning me down.
Someone settled between my legs.
And then I realize Bastien’s rubbing his cock against me, my legs spread open, my panties thrown elsewhere onto the bed. It’s dark and I can’t see him, and I’m already wet, because he’s been touching me for a while it seems, coaxing me awake so I’m already burning for him.
“Was wondering if I’d have to start fucking you for you to wake up,” he murmurs, staring down at his cock gliding between my thighs.
A haze has fallen over my mind. I blink against the pitch-dark, try to move away—
He presses against my entrance. My breath hitches at the intrusion. But then he retreats, grabbing himself and rubbing from my clit to my pussy, spreading the wetness that’s gathered.
“Wait—” I try to sit up.
“Shh-shh-shh.” He clamps his hand down harder over my mouth, sealing it shut, while he slides himself inside. “Just let me…” In one slow thrust he’s impaling me all the way, his hips flush against mine, my center screaming at the burn, clenching as he forces himself in.
I moan against his hand.
“Breathe, Mallary,” he says, his voice soft behind his mask. “Just let me give you what you need.”
Just his words spark a flame inside my chest, the low rumble of his voice, dripping in barely-contained pleasure.
The fit is too good, too perfect, even when I’m sore from every other night he’s been inside me.
This twinge of pain, because he’s decided my cunt is his. He doesn’t even need to say it.
My back arches off the plush sheets as he pulls out, just enough to see how his cock glistens with my arousal, his hand moving away as I suck in air. “Baz, please.”
“Already begging,” he chides. He pushes my thighs back against my stomach, watching as my pussy greedily takes him in. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s too much—I can’t—”
I can’t grasp on to a single thought, my fingers twisting in the sheets, searching for him, to push back against his hips, but I can’t reach, and as he pulls out again, I feel every ridge, the slide of his cock against my walls too delicious, too sweet.
“You can.” He leans closer, folding my legs back even more. His eyes are half-closed in pleasure. “Just let me do this for you.”
Tears brim at my lashes. I hate him. I crave him so fucking much.
“I think about you and your cunt all day,” he whispers. Each slow thrust in deeper, in my fucking stomach. “Do you think about me?”
I nod, because it’s the truth, every thought always, always spiraling towards whatever this is unfolding between us.
“Even when you’re with him?”
My eyes snap open. “Who?”
He thrusts again, too harshly, pulling a cry from my lips. “I know he’s invited you to his room.”
Baz moves quicker, his hips meeting mine in slow, deep movements. In this position, I’m wide open to him, unable to squirm away as he sheathes himself as deep as I can take him. There’s a lewd squelch every time he thrusts, a delicious burn every time his hips are flush with mine.
“And you know I—” I gasp, unable to speak, all my thoughts disappearing when his thumb brushes my clit.
“What?” His head tilts mockingly. “What do I know?”
I grit my teeth. “You know I haven’t—I’m not—” My hands fumble for his hips again, but with my legs bent as they are, it’s futile.
“What I do know,” he says, his voice vibrating through me, “is that I am the one who’s fucking you. I’m the one you belong to. I have your nights, don’t I?”
“Yes.” I give up, falling limp against the bed as his pace quickens. Fire builds in my core, my hips grinding side to side to find any relief. “Yes, yes.”
“I have you,” he says, leaning closer, letting my legs fall on either side of his arms. I notice that he’s wearing only a black long-sleeved shirt, not his usual sweater. His dark hair falls in messy waves around his white mask. “I have your nights, your music, your mind.”
My core tightens. “Yes.”
Another brush of his thumb on my clit and I gasp his name, my pussy spasming on his cock, unable to breathe as my orgasm crashes over me.
Everything in me tightening, then releasing, the world stopping for a few mindless seconds before it starts again.
He follows a few seconds later, his hips slamming to mine.
I feel every twitch of his cock, his stomach flexing with each ragged inhalation that hisses through his teeth.
“I can guarantee you he won’t listen to every hitch of your breath the way I do, every little sound, to know what drives you crazy,” he mutters, leaning closer to me again. My thighs are splayed open around his hips. “No one watches you like I do, Mallary.”
Still flushed with pleasure, my lashes wet, I feel raw, exposed, underneath him. My hands find his chest, skating down to the firm, lean muscles above his hips. “You have my nights,” I say. No one else.
As the aftershocks start to abate, he pulls away from me. I’m a mess, wet and sticky, and there’s still a persistent anxiety in my chest that won’t disappear, and even though I shouldn’t want him anywhere near me, that static energy shaking my limbs lessens when he’s touching me.
“Please.” I reach for him, and this time, my fingers find his wrist. “Please, stay.”
He always leaves. He claims to want me so badly, but he never lingers long.
Baz stares at me like he hadn’t expected me to ask. “Alright.” He sits next to me, the warmth from his body like a furnace in this cold room. His back is stiff, and he looks down at me with wary eyes.
Naked, my oversized shirt discarded on the other end of the bed, I curl closer. I don’t let go of his hand—I want to hold him as my own captive. His fingers are long and thin. A pianist’s fingers. I trace his palm, the ridge of his knuckles.
“What happened?” His voice is low.
I can’t meet his eyes, staring at the length of my hand against his.
“Mallary.”
“They want me to push Henri harder. They said—” I swallow the lump in my throat. “If I can’t get him to play one of Chopin’s preludes at the party, then I’m fired.”
Henri is eight. His hands are often too small for what a piece requires. I’ve told him to omit a few notes. But if Mariane and Leo are so fond of the song, won’t they be able to tell?
There’s an almost imperceptible twitch to his fingers.
“It’s fine, I don’t know why I’m so…”
He shifts, so he can fully face me while I lay against my pillow.
I want to roll over and hide. Why would he truly care how I'm feeling about the Beauchenes’ threat?
If they follow through with it, it’s not like there is truly anything to prevent me from leaving.
There is nothing between us, except the music, and whatever this is—a lust that’s still unspent.
It’s always there, simmering in my blood, roiling and dissipating only when he buries himself inside me.
I tell myself I am only using him. He has sway over Leo and Mariane, and if I let him do what he wants, then one day these will only be distant memories of mutual pleasure.
This calmness is strange, this conversation is too casual.
“I can take care of this for you,” he says.
I can’t truly expect him to make good on his promises and keep the family from getting in the way, can I?
“No, it’s fine.” I look elsewhere, at the wall, the little angels across the room, unnerved by Bastien’s stare, even when I want to crawl closer and soak in his warmth. “I can do it. Henri will get there. I just—”
“Mallary.”
“You don’t believe in me?”
There’s a pause. “I do.”
Maybe he knows the direction of my thoughts: I want to do this on my own. I want the music to speak for itself.
“How do I do this?” I whisper.
His head tilts in the dark. And then slowly he’s reaching for me, cupping my cheek with his palm, moving with an obvious hesitance, so gentle, too gentle.
He’s never held anyone, never had a reason to caress the cheek of a lover.
Or a fuck buddy. His thumb skates across my cheekbone, once, and then again, back and forth.
“Henri is smart,” he says. “If you were tutoring a younger version of yourself, what would you do?”
“I didn’t play at his age.”
“I know.”
My eyes burn with frustration. “I would start with the hardest sections. Work my way back.”
He’s silent, waiting for the rest of my reply.
“When I taught myself as a teenager, I fixated on the hard things. Couldn’t think of anything else until I got them down. I was practicing even without a keyboard in front of me. All in my head.”
“You think Henri doesn’t do the same thing?”
He would know—I imagine he and I are the same in this way, like he’s said so many times before.
Is that what he’s meant this whole time?
His upbringing was rigorous, and I forced the music into my bones, whether it wanted to be there or not.
Both of us, trying to wrest control from something intangible.
“Lay down with me.”
He goes still at my request. Reluctant, even when he’s told me so many times how much he wants me.
He flames an indignation in me. He makes me want to shove him, slap him, scream at him, just for being able to unravel my thoughts, cracking open my ribcage and peering into the disaster that is my heart. I hate how much I want him. How good it feels to be seen by another.
Bastien finally lays his head on the pillow next to mine, the white mask shifting.
We face each other, the Ghost and I, with only a few inches between us.
He watches me. I stare right back, thinking how strange it is to feel so comfortable next to him, when there is no music and our bodies aren’t touching.
I drift off like that, my eyelids falling heavy, dreaming deeply of a warm humming, a heart beating as a drum.
But then, in the morning, when I open my eyes, he is gone.